Chapter V: Part 5

"That means me," Belchik Pluly said. He climbed hastily to his feet. "Can't stand dives! Get hallucinations. Nasty ones." He staggered a little then, and Trigger realized for the first time that Belchy had got pretty thoroughly drunk.

"Better give our guest a hand, Virod," Lyad called over her shoulder. "Happy dreams, Belchik! Are you going by Rest, Trigger? No? You're not, of course, Quillan. Balmordan?"

The Devagas scientist also shook his head.

"Then by all means," Lyad said, "let's stay together a little while longer."

15

"She," said Trigger, "is a remarkable woman."

"Yeah," said Quillan. "Remarkable."

"May I ask you, finally, a few pertinent questions?" Trigger inquired humbly.

"Not here, sweet stuff," said Quillan.

"You're a bossy sort of slob, Heslet Quillan," she said equably.

Quillan didn't answer. They had come down the stairway to the storerooms level and were walking along the big lit hallway toward their cabins. Trigger felt pleasantly relaxed. But she did have a great many pertinent questions to ask Quillan now, and she wanted to get started on them.

"Oh!" she said suddenly. Just as suddenly, Quillan's hand was on her shoulder, moving her along.

"Hush now," he said. "And keep walking."

"But you saw it, didn't you?" Trigger asked, trying to look back to the small open door into the storerooms they'd just passed.

Quillan sighed. "Certainly," he said. "Guy in space armor."

"But what's he doing there?"

"Checking something, I suppose." His hand left her shoulder; and, for just a moment, his finger rested lightly across her lips. Trigger glanced up at him. He was walking on beside her, not looking at her.

All right, she thought--she could take a hint. But she felt tense and uncomfortable now. Something was going on again, apparently.

They turned into the side passage and came up to her cabin. Trigger started to turn to face him, and Quillan picked her up and went on without a noticeable break in his stride. Close to her ear, his voice whispered, "Explain in a moment! Dangerous here."

As the door to the end cabin closed behind them, he put her back on her feet. He looked at his watch.

"We can talk here," he said. "But there may not be much time for conversation." He gestured toward a table against the wall. "Take a look at the setup."

Trigger looked. The table was littered with instruments, like an electronic workbench. A visual screen showed a view of both her own cabin and a section of the passage outside it, up to the point where it entered the big hall.

"What is it?" she asked uncertainly.

"Essentially," said Quillan, "we've set up a catassin trap."

"Catassin!" Trigger squeaked.

"That's right. Don't get too nervous though. I've caught them before. Used to be a sort of specialty of mine. And there's one thing about them--they'll blab their pointed little heads off if you can get one alive and promise it its catnip...." He'd shucked off his jacket and taken out of it a very large handgun with a bell-shaped mouth. He laid the gun down next to the view screen. "In case," he said, unreassuringly. "Now just a moment."

He sat down in front of the view screen and did something to it.

"All right," he said then. "We're here and set. Probability period starts in three minutes, continues for sixty. Signal on any blip. Otherwise no gabbing. And remember they're _fast_. Don't get sappy."

There was no answer. Quillan did something else to the screen and stood up again. He looked broodingly at Trigger. "It's those damn computers again!" he said. "I don't see any sense in it."

"In what?" she asked shakily.

"Everything that's happening around here is being fed back to them at the moment," he said. "When they heard about our invite to Lyad's dinner party, and who was to be present, they came up with a honey. In the time period I mentioned a catassin is supposed to show up at your cabin. They give it a pretty high probability."

Trigger didn't say anything. If she had, she probably would have squeaked again.

"Now don't worry," he said, squeezing her shoulder reassuringly between a large thumb and four slightly less large fingers. "Nice muscle!" he said absently. "The cabin's trapped and I've taken other precautions." He massaged the muscle gently. "Probably the only thing that will happen is that we'll sit around here for an hour or so, and then we'll have a hearty laugh together at those foolish computers!" He smiled.

"I thought," Trigger said without squeaking, "that everybody was pretty sure it was dead."

Quillan frowned. "Well, that's something else again! There are at least two ways I know of to sneak it past that search. Jump it out and in with a subtub is one--they could have done that from their own cabin as soon as they had its pattern. So I don't really think it's dead. It's just--"

"Quillan," a tiny voice said from the viewer.

He turned, took two steps, and sat down fast before the viewer. "Go ahead!"

"Fast motion in B section. Going your way."

Fast motion. A thought flicked up. "Quillan--" Trigger began.

He raised a shushing hand. "Get a silhouette?" he asked. His hands went to a set of control switches and stayed there.

"No. Pickup shows a haze like in the reconstruct." An instant's pause. "Leaving B section."

"Motion in C section," said another voice.

Quillan said, "All right. It's coming. No more verbal reports unless it changes direction. If you want to stay alive, don't move unless you're in armor."

There was silence. Quillan sat unmoving, eyes fixed on the screen. Trigger stood just behind him. Her legs had begun to tremble. She'd better tell him.

"Quillan--"

For an instant, in the screen, there was something like heat shimmer at the far end of the passage. Then she saw her cabin door pop open.

The interior of the cabin showed in a brief flare of blue light. In it was a shape. It vanished instantly again.

She heard Quillan make a shocked, incredulous sound. His left hand slashed at a switch on the panel.

Twenty feet from them, just behind the closed door to the passage, was a splatting noise like a tremendous slap. Then another noise, strangely like a brief cloudburst. Then silence again.

She realized Quillan was on his feet beside her, the oversized gun in his hand. It was pointed at the door. His eyes switched suddenly from the door to the screen and back again. She felt him relaxing slowly. Then she discovered she was clutching a handful of his shirt along with a considerable chunk of tough skin. She went on clutching it.

"Fly swatter got it!" he said. "Whew!" He looked down and patted the clutching hand. "No catassin! The trap in the cabin just wasn't fast enough. Had a gravity mine outside our door, just in case. _That_ was barely fast enough!" For once, Quillan looked almost awed.

"L-l-l-like--" Trigger began. She tried again. "Like a little yellow man--"

"You saw it? In the cabin? Yes. Never saw anything just like it before!"

Trigger pressed her lips together to make them stay steady.

"I have," she said. "That's what I was trying to tell you."

Quillan stared at her for an instant. "You'll tell me about it in a couple of minutes. I've got some quick work to do first." He checked himself. A wide grin spread suddenly over his face. "Know something, doll?"

"What?"

"The damn computers!" Major Quillan said happily. "They goofed!"

* * * * *

The gravity mine would have reduced almost any life-form which moved into its field to a rather thin smear, but there wasn't even that left of the yellow demon-shape. Something, presumably something it was carrying, had turned it into a small blaze of incandescent energy as the mine flattened it out. Which explained the sound like a cloudburst. That had been the passage's automatic fire extinguishers going into brief but correspondingly violent action.

Quillan's group stayed out of sight for the time being. He'd barely got the mine put away, along with a handful of warped metal slugs, which was what the mine had left of their attacker's mechanical equipment, and Trigger's cabin door locked again, when three visitors came zooming down the storerooms hall in a small car. A ship's engineer and two assistants had arrived to check on what had started the extinguishers.

"They may," Quillan said hopefully, "just go away again." He and Trigger were watching the engineers through the viewer which had been extended to cover their end of the passage.

They didn't just go away again. They checked the extinguishers, looked at the floor, still wet but rapidly absorbing the last drops of the brief deluge. They exchanged puzzled comment. They checked everything once more. Finally the leader made use of the door announcer and asked if he might intrude.

Quillan switched off the viewer. "Come in," he said resignedly.

The door opened. The three glanced at Quillan, and then at Trigger-plus-Beldon. Their eyes widened only slightly. Duty on the Dawn City produced hardened men.

Neither Quillan nor Trigger could offer the slightest explanation as to what had started the extinguishers. The engineers apologized and withdrew. The door closed again.

Quillan switched on the viewer. Their voices came back into the cabin as they climbed into their car.

"So that's how it happened," one of the assistants was saying reflectively.

"Right," said the ship's engineer. "Like to burst into flames myself."

"Ha-ha-ha!" They drove off.

Trigger flushed. She looked at Quillan.

"Perhaps I ought to get into something else," she said. "Now that the party's over."

"Perhaps," Quillan admitted. "I'll have Gaya bring something down. We want to stay out of your cabin for an hour or so till everything's been checked. There'll be a few conferences to go through now."

Gaya arrived next, with clothes. Trigger retired to the cabin's bathroom with them and came out a few minutes later, dressed again. Meanwhile the Dawn City's First Security Officer also had arrived and was setting up a portable restructure stage in the center of the cabin. He looked rather grim, but he also looked like a very much relieved man.

"I suggest we run your sequence off first, Major," he said. "Then we can put them on together, and compare them."

Trigger sat down on a couch beside Gaya to watch. She'd been told that the momentary view of the little demon-shape in the cabin had been deleted from Security's copy of their own sequence and wasn't to be mentioned.

Otherwise there really was not too much to see. What the attacking creature had used to blur the restructure wasn't clear, except that it wasn't a standard scrambler. Amplified to the limits of clarity and stepped down in time to the limit of immobility, all that emerged was a shifting haze of energy, which very faintly hinted at a dwarfish human shape in outline. A rather unusually small and heavy catassin, the Security chief pointed out, would present such an outline. That something quite material was finally undergoing devastating structural disorganization on the gravity mine was unpleasantly obvious, but it produced no further information. The sequence ended with the short blaze of heat which had set off the extinguishers.

Then they ran the restructure of the preceding double killing. Trigger watched, gulping a little, till it came to the point where the haze shape actually was about to touch its victims. Then she studied the carpet carefully until Gaya nudged her to indicate the business was over. Catassins almost invariably used their natural equipment in the kill; it was a swift process, of course, but shockingly brutal, and Trigger didn't care to remember what the results looked like in a human being. Both men had been killed in that manner; and the purpose obviously was to conceal the fact that the killer was not a catassin, but something even more efficient along those lines.

It didn't occur to the Security chief to question Trigger. A temporal restructure of a recent event was a far more reliable witness than any set of human senses and memory mechanisms. He left presently, reassured that the catassin incident was concluded. It startled Trigger to realize that Security did not seem to be considering seriously the possibility of discovering the human agent behind the murders.

Quillan shrugged. "Whoever did it is covered three ways in every direction. The chief knows it. He can't psych four thousand people on general suspicions, and he'd hit mind-blocks in every twentieth passenger presently on board if he did. Anyway he knows we're on it, and that we have a great deal better chance of nailing the responsible characters eventually."

"More information for the computers, eh?" Trigger said.

"Uh-huh."

"You got this little chunk the hard way, I feel," she observed.

"True," Quillan admitted, "But we have to get it any way we can till we get enough to move on. Then we move." He looked at her, with an air of regarding a new idea. "You know," he said, "you don't do badly for an amateur!"

"She doesn't do badly," Gaya's voice said behind Trigger, "for anybody. How do you people feel about a drink? I thought I could use one myself after looking at the chief's restructure."

Trigger felt herself coloring. Praise from the cloak and dagger experts! For some reason it pleased her immensely. She turned her head to smile at Gaya, standing there with three glasses on a tray.

"Thanks!" she said. She took one of the glasses. Gaya held the tray out to Quillan and took the third glass herself.

It was some five minutes later when Trigger remarked, "You know, I'm getting sleepy."

Quillan looked around the viewer equipment he and Gaya were dismantling. "Why not hit the couch over there and take a nap?" he suggested. "It'll be about an hour before the boys can get down here for the real conference."

"Good idea." Trigger yawned, finished her drink, put the glass on a table, and wandered over to the couch. She stretched out on it. A drowsy somnolence enveloped her almost instantly. She closed her eyes.

Ten minutes later, Gaya, standing over her, announced, "Well, she's out."

"Fine," said Quillan, packaging the rest of the equipment. "Tell them to haul in the rest cubicle. I'll be done here in a minute. Then you and the lady warden can take over."

Gaya looked down at Trigger. There was a trace of regret in her face. "I think," she said, "she's going to be fairly displeased with you when she wakes up and finds she's on Manon."

"Wouldn't doubt it," said Quillan. "But from what I've seen of that chick, she's going to get fairly displeased with me from time to time on this operation anyway."

Gaya looked at his back.

"Major Quillan," she said, "would you like a tip from a keen-eyed operator?"

"Go ahead, ole keen-eyed op!" Quillan said in kindly tones.

"Not that you don't have it coming, boy," said Gaya. "But watch yourself! This one is dangerous. This one could sink you for keeps."

"You're going out of your mind, doll," said Quillan.

16

The Precol headquarters dome on Manon Planet was still in the spot where Trigger had left it, looking unchanged; but everything else in the area seemed to have been moved, improved, expanded or taken away entirely, and unfamiliar features had appeared. In the screens of Commissioner Tate's Precol offices, Trigger could see both the new metropolitan-sized spaceport on which the Dawn City had set down that morning, and the towering glassy structures of the giant shopping and recreation center, which had been opened here recently by Grand Commerce in its bid for a cut of prospective outworld salaries. The salaries weren't entirely prospective either.

Ten miles away on the other side of Headquarters dome, new squares of living domes were sprouting up daily. At this morning's count they housed fifty-two thousand people. The Hub's major industries and assorted branches of Federation government had established a solid foothold on Manon.

Trigger turned her head as Holati Tate came into the office. He closed the door carefully behind him.

"How's the little critter doing?" he asked.

"Still absorbing the goop," Trigger said. She held Mantelish's small mystery plasmoid cupped lightly between thumbs and fingers, its bottom side down in a shallow bowl half full of something which Mantelish considered to be nutritive for plasmoids, or at least for this one. Its sides pulsed lightly and regularly against her palms. "The level of the stuff keeps going down," she added.

"Good," said Holati. He pulled a chair up to the table and sat down opposite her. He looked broodingly at plasmoid 113-A.

"You really think this thing _likes_ me--personally?" Trigger inquired.

Her boss said, "It's eating, isn't it? And moving. There were a couple of days before you got here when it looked pretty dead to me."

"Hard to believe," Trigger observed, "that a sort of leech-looking thing could distinguish between people."

"This one can. Do you get any sensations while holding it?"

"Sensations?" She considered. "Nothing particular. It's just like I said the other time--little Repulsive is rather nice to feel."

"For you," he said. "I didn't tell you everything."

"You rarely do," Trigger remarked.

"I'll tell you now," said Holati. "The day after we left, when it started acting very agitated and then very droopy, Mantelish said it might be missing the female touch it had got from you. He was being facetious, I think. But I couldn't see any reason not to try it, so I called in your facsimile and had her sit down at the table where the thing was lying."

"Yes?"

"Well, first it came flying up to her, crying 'Mama!' Not actually, of course. Then it touched her hand and recoiled in horror."

Trigger raised an eyebrow.

"It looked like it," he insisted. "We all commented on it. So then she reached out and touched it. Then she recoiled in horror."

"Why?"

"She said it had given her a very nasty electric jolt. Apparently like the one it gave Mantelish."

Trigger glanced down dubiously at Repulsive. "Gee, thanks for letting me hold it, Holati! It seems to have stopped eating now, by the way. Or whatever it does. Doesn't look much fatter if any, does it?"

The Commissioner looked. "No," he said. "And if you weighed it, you'd probably find it still weighs an exact three and a half pounds. Mantelish feels the thing turns any food intake directly into energy."

"Then it should be able to produce a very nice jolt at the moment," Trigger commented. "Now, what do I do with Repulsive?"

Holati took a towel from beneath the table and spread it out. "Absorbent material," he said. "Lay it on that and just let it dry. That's what we used to do."

Trigger shook her head. "Next thing, I'll be changing its diapers!"

"It isn't that bad," the Commissioner said. "Anyway, you will adopt baby, won't you?"

"I suppose I have to." She placed the plasmoid on the towel, wiped her hands and stepped back from it. "What happens if it falls on the floor?"

"Nothing," Holati said. "It just moves on in the direction it was going. Pretty hard to hurt those things."

"In that case," Trigger said, "let's check out its container now."

The Commissioner took Repulsive's container out of a desk safe and handed it to her. Its outer appearance was that of a neat modern woman's handbag with a shoulder strap. It had an antigrav setting which would reduce its overall weight, with the plasmoid inside, down to nine ounces if Trigger wanted it that way. It also had a combination lock, unmarked, virtually invisible, the settings of which Trigger already had memorized. Without knowing the settings, a determined man using a high-powered needle blaster might have opened the handbag in around nine hours. A very special job.

Trigger ran through the settings, opened the container and peered inside. "Rather cramped," she observed.

"Not for one of them. We needed room for the gadgetry."

"Yes," she said. "Subspace rotation." She shook her head. "Is that another Space Scout invention?"

"No," said Holati. "They stole it from Subspace Engineers. Engineers don't know we have it yet. Far as I know, nobody else has got it from them. Go ahead--give it a try."

"I was going to." Trigger snapped the container shut, slipped the strap over her shoulder and stood straight, left hand closed over the lower rim of the purselike object. She shifted the ball of her thumb and the tip of her middle finger to the correct spots and began to apply pressure. Then she started. Handbag and strap had vanished.

"Feels odd!" She smiled. "And to bring it back, I just have to be here--the same place--and say those words."

He nodded. "Want to try that now?"

Trigger waved her left hand gently through the air beside her. "What happens," she asked, "if the thing surfaces exactly where my hand happens to be?"

"It won't surface if there's anything bulkier than a few dust motes in the way. That's one improvement the Sub Engineers haven't heard about yet."

"Well...." She glanced around, picked up a plastic ruler from the desk behind her, and moved back a cautious step. She waved the ruler's tip gingerly about in the area where the handbag had been.

"Come, Fido!" she said.

Nothing happened. She drew the ruler back.

"Come, Fido!"

Handbag and strap materialized in mid-air and thumped to the floor.

"Convinced?" Holati asked. He picked up the handbag and gave it back to her.

"It seems to work. How long will that little plasmoid last if it's left in subspace like that?"

He shrugged. "Indefinitely, probably. They're tough. We know that twenty-four hours at a stretch won't bother it in the least, so we've set that as the limit it's to stay rotated except in emergencies."

"And you--and one other person I'm not to know about, but who isn't anywhere near here--can also bring it back?"

"Yes. If we know the place from which it's been rotated. So the agreement is that--again except in absolute emergencies--it will be rotated only from one of the six points specified and known to all three of us."

Trigger nodded. She opened the container and went over to the table where the plasmoid still lay on its towel. It was dry by now. She picked it up.

"You're a lot of trouble, Repulsive!" she told it. "But these people think you must be worth it." She slipped it into the container, and it seemed to snuggle down comfortably inside. Trigger closed the handbag, lightened it to half its normal weight, slipped the strap back over her left shoulder. "And now," she inquired, "what am I to do with the stuff I usually keep in a purse?"

"You'll be in Precol uniform while you're here. We've had a special uniform made for you. Extra pockets."

Trigger sighed.

"Oh, they're quite inconspicuous and convenient," he assured her. "We checked with the girls on that."

"I'll bet!" she said. "Did they okay the porgee pouch too?"

"Sure. Porgee doping is a big thing all over the Hub at the moment. Among the ladies anyway. Shows you're the delicate sort, or something like that. I forget what they said. Want to start carrying it?"

"Hand it over," Trigger said resignedly. "I did see quite a few pouches on the ship. Might as well get people used to thinking I've turned into a porgee sniffer."

Holati went back to the desk safe and took out a flat pouch, the length of his hand but narrower. He gave it to her. It appeared to be worked of gold thread; one side was studded with tiny pearls, the opposite surface was plain. Trigger laid the plain side against the cloth of her skirt, just below the right hip, and let go. It adhered there. She stretched her right leg out to the side and considered the porgee pouch.

"Doesn't look too bad," she conceded. "That's real porgee in the top section?"

"The real article. Close to nine hundred and fifty credits worth."

"Suppose somebody wants to borrow a sniff? Wouldn't be good to have them fumbling around the pouch very much!"

"They can't," said the Commissioner. "That's why we made it porgee. When you buy a supply, it has to be adjusted to your individual chemistry, exactly. That's mainly what makes it expensive. Try using someone else's, and it'll flip you across the room."

"Better get this adjusted to my chemistry then. I might have to take a demonstration sniff now and then to make it look right."

"We've already done that," he said.

"Good," said Trigger. "Now let's see!" She straightened up, left hand closed lightly around the bottom of the purse, right hand loose at her side. Her eyes searched the office briefly. "Some object around here you don't particularly value?" she asked. "Something largish?"

"Several," the Commissioner said. He glanced around. "That overgrown flower pot in the corner is one. Why?"

"Just practicing," said Trigger. She turned to face the flower pot. "That will do. Now--here I come along, thinking of nothing." She started walking toward the flower pot. "Then, suddenly, in front of me, there stands a plasmoid snatcher."

She stopped in mid-stride. Handbag and strap vanished, as her right hand slapped the porgee pouch. The Denton popped into her palm. The flower pot screeched and flew apart.

"Golly!" she said, startled. "Come, Fido!" Handbag and strap reappeared and she reached out and caught the strap. She looked around at Commissioner Tate.

"Sorry about your pot, Holati. I was just going to shake it up a little. I forgot you people had been handling my gun. I keep it switched to stunner myself when I'm carrying it," she added pointedly.

"Perfectly all right about the pot," the Commissioner said. "I should have warned you. Otherwise, I'd say all you'd need is a moment to see them coming."

Trigger spun the Denton to its stunner setting and laid it back inside the slit which had appeared along the side of the porgee pouch. She ran thumb and finger tip along the length of the slit, and the pouch was sealed again.

"That's the part that's worrying me," she admitted.

* * * * *

When Trigger presented herself at Commissioner Tate's personal quarters early that evening, she found him alone.

"Sit down," he said. "I've been trying to get hold of Mantelish for the past hour. He's over on the other side of the planet again."

Trigger sat down and lifted an eyebrow. "Should he be?"

"I don't think so," said Holati. "But I've been overruled on that. He's still the best man the Federation has working on the various plasmoid problems, so I'm not to interfere with his investigations any more than I can show is absolutely necessary. It's probably all right. Those U-League guards of his aren't a bad group."

"If they compare with the boys the League had watching the Plasmoid Project, they should be just about tops," Trigger said.

"The Space Scouts thank you for those kind words," the Commissioner told her. "Those weren't League guards. When it came to deciding who was to keep an eye on you, I overruled everybody."

She smiled. "I might have guessed it. What's there for the professor to be investigating on the other side of Manon?"

"He's hunting for some theoretical creatures he calls wild plasmoids."

"_Wild_ plasmoids?"

"Uh-huh. His idea is that some of the plasmoids the Old Galactics were using on Manon might have got away from them, or just been left lying around, so to speak, and could have survived till now. He thinks they might even be reproducing themselves. He's looking for them with a special detector he built."

Trigger held up a finger on which was a slim gold ring with a small green stone in it. "Like this one?" she asked.

"He's got a large version of that type of detector with him too. But he thinks that if any wild plasmoids are around, they're likely to be along the lines of 113-A. So he's also constructed a detector which reacts to 113-A."

"I see." Trigger was silent a moment. "Does Mantelish have any idea why Repulsive is the only plasmoid known to which our ring detectors don't react?"

"Apparently he does," Holati said. "But when he starts in on those subjects, I find him difficult to follow." He looked soberly at Trigger. "There are times," he confessed, "when I suspect Professor Mantelish is somewhat daft. But probably he's just so brilliant that he keeps fading beyond my mental range."

Trigger laughed. "My father used to come home from a session with Mantelish muttering the same sort of thing." She glanced at the ring again. "By the way, have any plasmoids actually been stolen around here for us to detect?"

He nodded. "Quite a few have been snitched from Harvest Moon and various storage points by now. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them turn up here in the dome eventually. Not that it's a serious loss. What the thieves have been getting away with is small stuff--plasmoid nuts and bolts, so to speak. Still, each of those would still fetch around a hundred thousand credits, if you offered them to the right people. Incidentally, if asking you to this conference has interfered with any personal plans, just say so. We can put it off till tomorrow. Especially since it's beginning to look as if Mantelish won't make it here either."

"Either?" Trigger said.

"Quillan's already had to cancel. He got involved with something during the afternoon."

"Oh," she said coolly. She looked at her watch. "I do have a dinner date with Brule Inger in an hour and a half. But you said this meeting wasn't to take more than an hour anyway, didn't you?"

He nodded.

"Then I'm free. My quarters are arranged, and I'm ready to go back on my old job in the morning."

"Fine," said the Commissioner. "There are things I wanted to discuss with you privately anyway. If we can't get through to Mantelish in another ten minutes, we'll go ahead with that. I would have liked to have Quillan here to fill us in with data about some of the top-level crooks in the Hub. They're a specialty of his. I don't know too much about them myself."

He paused. "That Lyad Ermetyne now," he said, "looks as if she either already is part of the main problem or is working very hard to get there. She's had a Tranest warship stationed here for the past two weeks. A thing called the Aurora."

Trigger was startled. "But warships aren't allowed in Manon System!"

"It isn't in the system. It's stationed a half light-year away, where it has a legal right to be. Nothing to worry about as such. It's just a heavy armed frigate, which is the limit Tranest is allowed to build. Since it's Lyad's private boat, I imagine it's been souped up with everything they could throw in. Anyway, the fact that she sent it here ahead of her indicates she isn't just dropping in for a casual visit."

"She made that pretty clear herself!" Trigger said. "Why do you think she's being so open about it?"

He shrugged. "Might have a number of reasons. One could be that she'd get the beady eye anyway as soon as she showed up here. When Lyad goes anywhere, it's usually on business. After Quillan reported on your dinner party, I got all the information I could on her. The First Lady stacks up as a tough cookie! Also smart. Most of those Ermetynes wind up being dead-brained by some loving relative, and apparently they have to know how to whip up a sharp brew of poison before they're let into kindergarten. Lyad's been top dog among them since she was eighteen--"

His head turned. A bell had begun pinging in the next room. He stood up.

"Probably Mantelish's outfit on the transmitter," he said. "I told them to call as soon as they located him." He stopped at the door. "Care for a drink, Trigger girl? You know where the stuff is."

"Not just now, thanks."

The Commissioner came back in a couple of minutes. "Darn fool got lost in a swamp! They found him finally, but he's too tired to come over now."

He sat down and scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Do you remember the time you passed out on the Harvest Moon?" he asked.

Trigger looked at him, puzzled. "The time I what?"

"Passed out. Fainted. Went out cold."

"I? You're out of your mind, Holati! I never fainted in my life."

"Reason I asked," he said, "is that I've been told a spell in a rest cubicle--same thing as a rest cubicle anyway, only it's used for therapy--sometimes resolves amnesias."

"Amnesias! What _are_ you talking about?"

The Commissioner said. "I'm talking about you. This is bound to be a jolt, Trigger girl. Might have been easier after a drink. But I'll just give it to you straight. About a week after Mantelish and his U-League crew first arrived here, you did pass out on one occasion while we were on the Harvest Moon with them. And afterwards you didn't remember doing it."

"I didn't?" Trigger said weakly.

"No. I thought it might have cleared up, and you just had some reason for not wanting to mention it." He got to his feet. "Like that drink now--before I go on with the details?"

She nodded.

17

Holati Tate brought her the drink and went on with the details.

Trigger and he and a dozen or so of the first group of U-League investigators had been in what was now designated as Section 52 of Harvest Moon. The Commissioner was by himself, checking over some equipment which had been installed in one of the compartments. After a while Doctor Azol joined him and told him Mantelish and the others had gone on to another section. Holati and Azol finished the check-up together and were about to leave the area to catch up with the group, when Holati saw Trigger lying on the floor in an adjoining compartment.

"You seemed to be in some kind of coma," he said. "We picked you up and put you into a chair by one of the survey screens, and were trying to get out a call on Azol's suit communicator to the ambulance boat when you suddenly opened your eyes. You looked at me and said, 'Oh, there you are! I was just going to go looking for you.'"

"It was obvious that you didn't realize anything unusual had happened. Azol started to say something, but I stepped on his foot, and he caught on. In fact, he caught on so fast that I became a little suspicious of him."

"Poor Azol!" Trigger said.

"Poor nothing!" the Commissioner said cryptically. "I'll tell you about that some other time. I cautioned Doctor Azol to say nothing to anybody until the incident had been clarified, in view of the stringent security precautions being practiced ... supposedly being practiced," he amended. Then he'd returned to Manon Planet with Trigger immediately, where she was checked over by Precol's medical staff. Physically there wasn't a thing wrong with her.

"And that," said Trigger, feeling a little frightened, "is something else I don't remember!"

"Well, you wouldn't," the Commissioner said. "You were fed a hypno-spray first. You went out for three hours. When you woke up, you thought you'd been having a good nap. Since the medics were sure you hadn't picked up some odd plasmoid infection, I wanted to know just what else had happened on Harvest Moon. One of those scientific big shots might also have used a hypno-spray on you, with the idea of turning you into a conditioned assistant for future shenanigans."

Trigger grinned faintly. "You do have a suspicious mind!" The grin faded. "Was that what they were going to find out in that mind-search interview on Maccadon I skipped out on?"

"It's one of the things they might have looked for," he agreed.

Trigger gazed at him very thoughtfully for a moment. "Well, I loused that deal up!" she remarked. "But why is everybody--" She shook her head. "Excuse me. Go on."

The Commissioner went on. "Old Doc Leeharvis was handling the hypnosis herself. She hit what she thought might be a mind-block when she tried to get you to remember what happened. We know now it wasn't a mind-block. But she wouldn't monkey with you any farther, and told me to get in an expert. So I called the Psychology Service's headquarters on Orado."

Trigger looked startled, then laughed. "The eggheads? You went right to the top there, didn't you?"

"Tried to," said Holati Tate. "It's a good idea when you want real service. They told me to stay calm and to say nothing to you. An expert would be shipped out promptly."

"Was he?"

"Yes."

Trigger's eyes narrowed a little. "Same old hypno-spray treatment?"

"Right," said Commissioner Tate. "He came, sprayed, investigated. Then he told me to stay calm, and went off looking puzzled."

"Puzzled?" she said.

"If I hadn't known before that experts come in all grades," the Commissioner said, "I'd know it now. That first one they sent was just sharp enough to realize there might be something involved in the case he wasn't getting. But that was all."

Trigger was silent a moment. "So there've been more of those investigations I don't know about!" she observed, her voice taking on an edge.

"Uh-huh," the Commissioner said cautiously.

"How many?"

"Seven."

Trigger flushed, straightened up, eyes blazing, and pronounced a very unladylike word.

"Excuse me," she added a moment later. "I got carried away."

"Perfectly all right," said the Commissioner.

"I've been getting just a bit fed up anyway," Trigger went on, voice and color still high, "with people knocking me for a loop one way or another whenever they happen to feel like it!"

"Don't blame you a bit," he said.

"And please don't think I don't appreciate your calling in all those experts. I do. It's just their sneaky, underhanded, secretive methods I don't go for!"

"Exactly how I feel about it," said the Commissioner.

Trigger stared at him suspiciously. "You're a pretty sneaky type yourself!" she said. "Well, excuse the blowup, Holati. They probably had some reason for it. Have they found out anything at all with all the spraying and investigating?"

"Oh, yes. They seem to have made considerable progress. The last report I had from them--about a month ago--shows that the original amnesia has been completely resolved."

Trigger looked surprised. "If it's been resolved," she said reasonably, "why don't I remember what happened?"

"You aren't supposed to become conscious of it before the final interview--I don't know the reason for that. But the memory is available now. On tap, so to speak. They'll give you a cue, and then you'll remember it."

"Just like that, eh?" She paused. "So the Psychology Service is Whatzzit."

"Whatzzit?" said the Commissioner.

She explained about Whatzzit. He grinned.

"Yes," he said. "They're the ones who've been giving the instructions, as far as you're concerned."

Trigger was silent a moment. "I've heard," she said, "the eggheads have terrific pull when they want to use it. You don't hear much about them otherwise. Let me think just a little."

"Go ahead," said Holati.

A minute ticked away.

"What it boils down to so far," Trigger said then, "is still pretty much what you told me on Maccadon. The Psychology Service thinks I know something that might help clean up the plasmoid problem. Or at least help explain it."

He nodded.

"And the people who've been trying to grab me very probably are doing it for exactly the same reason."

He nodded again. "That's almost certain."

"Do you think the eggheads might already have figured out what the connection is?"

The Commissioner shook his head. "If they had, we'd be doing something about it. The Federation Council is very nervous!"

"Well...." Trigger said. She pursed her lips. "That Lyad...." she said.

"What about her?"

"She tried to hire me," said Trigger. "Major Quillan reported it, I suppose?"

"Sure."

"And it wouldn't be just to steal some stupid plasmoid. Especially since you say a number of small ones are already available. Then there're the ones that raiders picked up in the Hub. She probably has a collection by now."

He nodded. "Probably."

"She seems to know quite a bit about what's been going on...."

"Very likely she does."

"Let's grab her!" said Trigger. "We can do it quietly. And she's too big to be mind-blocked. We'd get part of the answer. Perhaps all of it!"

Something flared briefly in the Commissioner's small gray eyes. He reached over and patted her knee.

"You're a girl after my own heart, Trigger girl," he said. "I'm for it. But half the Council would have fainted dead away if they'd heard you make that suggestion!"

"They're as touchy as that?" she asked, disappointed.

"Yes--and you can't quite blame them. Fumbles could be pretty bad. When it comes to someone around Lyad's level, our own group is restricted to defensive counteraction. If we get evidence against her, it'll be up to the diplomats to decide what's to be done about it. Tactfully. We wouldn't be further involved."

Trigger nodded, watching him. "Go on."

"Well, defensive counteraction can cover a lot of things, of course. If we actually run into the First Lady while we're engaged in it, we'll hold her--as long as we can. And from all accounts, now that she's showed up to take personal charge of things around here, we can expect some very fast, very direct action from Lyad."

"How fast?"

"My own guess," said the Commissioner, "would be around a week. If she hasn't moved by then, we might help things along a little."

"Make a few of those openings for her, eh? Well, that doesn't sound too bad." Trigger reflected. "Then there's Point Number Two," she said.

"What's that?"

She grimaced. "I'm not real keen on it," she confessed, "but I think we'd better do something about that interview with Whatzzit I ducked out of. If they still want to talk to me--"

"They do. Very much so."

"What's that business about their saying it was okay now for me to go on to Manon?"

Commissioner Tate tugged gently at his left ear lobe. "Frankly," he said, "that's something that shook me a little."

"Shook you? Why?"

"It's that matter of experts coming in grades. The upper ranks in the Psychology Service are extremely busy people, I understand. After your first interview we were shifted upward promptly. A couple of middling high-bracket investigators took over for a while. But after the fourth interview I was told I'd have to bring you to the Hub to let somebody really competent handle the next stage of whatever they've been doing. They said they couldn't spare anybody of that caliber for a trip to Manon."

"Was _that_ the real reason we went to Maccadon?" Trigger asked, startled.

"Sure. But we still hadn't got anywhere near the Service's top level then. As I get it, their topnotchers don't spend much time on individual cases. They keep busy with things on the scale of our more bothersome planetary cultures--and there are supposed to be only a hundred or so of them in that category. So I was more than a little surprised when the Service informed me finally one of those people was coming to Maccadon to conduct your ninth interview."

"One of the real eggheads!" Trigger smiled nervously. "And then I just took off! They can't have too good an opinion of me at the moment, you know."

"Apparently that didn't upset them in the least," the Commissioner said. "They told me to stay calm and make sure you got to Manon all right. Then they said they had a ship operating in this area, and they'd route it over to Manon after you arrived here."

"A ship?" Trigger asked.

"I've seen a few of their ships--they looked like oversized flying mountains. Camouflage jobs. What they actually are is spacegoing superlaboratories, from what I've heard. This one has a couple of those topnotchers on board, and one of them will take you on. It's due here in a day or so."

Trigger had paled somewhat. "You know," she said, "I feel a little shaken myself now."

"I'm not surprised," said the Commissioner.

She shook her head. "Well if they're topnotchers, they must know what they're doing." She gave him a smile. "Looks like I'm something extremely unusual! Like a bothersome planetary culture.... Weak joke," she added.

The Commissioner ignored the weak joke. "There's another thing," he said thoughtfully.

"What's that?"

"When I mentioned your reluctance about being interviewed, they told me not to worry about it--that you wouldn't try to duck out again. That's why I was surprised when you brought up the matter of the interview yourself just now."

"Now that is odd," Trigger admitted after a pause. "How would they know?"

"Right," he said. He sighed. "Guess we're both a little out of our depth there. I've come close to getting impatient with them a few times--had the feeling they were stalling me off and holding back information. But presumably they do know what they're doing." He glanced at his watch. "That hour's about up now, by the way."

"Well, if there's something else that should be discussed I can break my dinner date," Trigger said, somewhat reluctantly. "I had a chance to talk with Brule at the spaceport for a while, when we came in this morning."

"I wasn't suggesting that," said Holati. "There still are things to be discussed, but a few hours one way or the other won't make any difference. We'll get together again around lunch tomorrow. Then you'll be filled in pretty well on all the main points of this business."

Trigger nodded. "Fine."

"What I had in mind right now was that the Service people suggested having you look over their last report on you after your arrival. You'd have just enough time for that before going to keep your date. Care to do it?"

"I certainly would!" Trigger said.

The transmitter signaled for attention while she was studying the report. Holati Tate went off to answer it. The report was rather lengthy, and Trigger was still going over it when he got back. He sat down again and waited.

When she looked up finally, he asked, "Can you make much sense of it?"

"Not very much," Trigger admitted. "It just states what seems to have happened. Not how or why. Apparently they did get me to develop a total recall of that knocked-out period in the last interview--I even reported hearing you and Doctor Azol moving around and talking in the next compartment."

He nodded. "I remember enough of my conversation with Azol to be able to verify that part of it."

"Then, some time before I actually fell down," said Trigger, "I was apparently already in that mysterious coma. Getting deeper into it. It started when I walked away from Mantelish's group, without having any particular reason for doing it. I just walked. Then I was in another compartment by myself and still walking, and the stuff kept getting deeper, until I lost physical control of myself and fell down. Then I lay there a while until you came down that aisle and saw me. And after you'd picked me up and put me in that chair--just like that, everything clears up! Except that I don't remember what happened and think I've just left Mantelish to go looking for you. I don't even wonder how I happen to be sitting there in a chair!"

The Commissioner smiled briefly. "That's right. You didn't."

Her slim fingers tapped the pages of the report, the green stone in the ring he'd given her to wear reflecting little flashes of light. "They seem quite positive that nobody else came near me during that period. And that nobody had used a hypno-spray on me or shot a hypodermic pellet into me--anything like that--before the seizure or whatever it was came on. How do you suppose they could be so sure of that?"

"I wouldn't know," Holati said. "But I think we might as well assume they're right."

"I suppose so. What it seems to boil down to is they're saying I was undergoing something like a very much slowed-down, very profound emotional shock--source still undetermined, but profound enough to knock me completely out for a while. Only they also say that--for a whole list of reasons--it couldn't possibly have been an emotional shock after all! And when the effect left, it went instantaneously. That would be just the reverse to the pattern of an emotional shock, wouldn't it?"

"Yes," he said. "That occurred to me too, but it didn't explain anything to me. Possibly it's explained something to the Psychology Service."

"Well," Trigger said, "it's certainly all very odd. Very disagreeable, too!" She laid the report down on the arm of her chair and looked at the Commissioner. "Guess I'd better run now," she said. "But there was something you said before that made me wonder. There was really very little of Doctor Azol left after that plasmoid got through with him."

He nodded. "True."

"It wasn't Azol, was it?"

"No."

"Man, oh, man!" Trigger jumped up, bent over his chair and gave him a quick peck on an ear tip. "If I ask one more question, we'll be sitting here the next two hours. I'll run instead! See you around lunchtime, Commissioner!"

"Right, Trigger," he said, getting up.

He closed the door behind her and went back to the transmitter. He looked rather unhappy.

"Yes?" said a voice in the transmitter.

"She just left," Commissioner Tate said. "Get on the beam and stay there!"

18

"Well," Trigger said, regarding Brule critically, "I just meant to say that you're getting the least little bit plump here and there, under all that tan. I'll admit it doesn't show yet when you're dressed."

Brule smiled tolerantly. In silver swimming trunks and sandals, he was obviously a very handsome hunk of young man, and he knew it. So did Trigger. So did a quartet of predatory young females eyeing them speculatively from a table only twenty feet away.

"I've come swimming here quite a bit since they opened the Center," he said. He flexed his right arm and regarded his biceps complacently. "That's just streamlined muscle you're looking at, sweetheart!"

Trigger reached over and poked the biceps with a finger tip. "Muscle?" she said, smiling at him. "It dents. See?"

He clasped his other hand over hers and squeezed it lightly.

"Oh, golly, Brule!" she said happily. "I'm so glad I'm back!"

He gave her the smile. "You're not the only glad one!"

She looked around, humming softly. They were having dinner in one of the Grand Commerce Center's restaurants. This one happened to be beneath the surface of the artificial swimming lake installed in the Center--a giant grotto surrounded by green-gold chasms of water on every side. Underwater swimmers and bottom walkers moved past beyond the wide windows. A streak of silvery swiftness against a dark red canyon wall before her was trying to keep away from a trio of pursuing spear fishermen. Even the lake fish were Hub imports, advertised as such by the Center.

Her eyes widened suddenly. "Hey!" she said.

"What?"

"That group of people up there!"

Brule looked. "What about them?"

"No suits, you idiot!"

He grinned. "Oh, a lot of them do that. Okay by Federation law, you know. And seeing Manon's so close to becoming open Federation territory, we haven't tried to enforce minor Precol regulations much lately."

"Well--" Trigger began. He was still smiling. "Have you been doing it?" she inquired suspiciously.

"Swimming in the raw? Certainly. Depends on the company. If you weren't such a little prude, I'd have suggested it tonight. Want to try it later?"

Trigger colored. Prude again, she thought. "Nope," she said. "There are limits."

He patted her cheek. "On you it would look cute."

She shook her head, aware of a small fluster of guilt. There had been considerably less actual coverage in the Beldon costume than there was in the minute two-piece counterpart to Brule's silver trunks she wore at the moment. She'd have to tell Brule about the Beldon stunt, since it was more than likely he'd hear about it from others--Nelauk Pluly, for one.

But not now. Things were getting just a little delicate along that line at the moment.

"Leave us change the subject, pig," she said cheerfully. "Tell me what else you've been doing besides acquiring a gorgeous tan."

A couple of hours later, things began to get delicate again. Same subject. Trigger had been somewhat startled at the spaceport when Brule told her he had shifted his living quarters to a Center apartment, and that a large number of Precol's executives were taking similar liberties. Holati's stand-in, Acting Commissioner Chelly, apparently hadn't been too successful at keeping up personnel discipline.